YEARS AGO

Today is Thursday, Feb. 5, the 36th day of 2015. There are 329 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1783: Sweden recognizes the independence of the United States.

1897: The Indiana House of Representatives passes, 67-0, a measure offering a new (as well as hopelessly flawed) method for determining the area of a circle, which would have effectively redefined the value of pi as 3.2. (The bill died in the Indiana Senate.)

1919: Movie studio United Artists is incorporated by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith and Charles Chaplin.

1922: The first edition of Reader’s Digest is published.

1937: President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposes increasing the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices; the proposal, which failed in Congress, drew accusations that Roosevelt was attempting to “pack” the nation’s highest court.

1940: Glenn Miller and His Orchestra record “Tuxedo Junction” for RCA Victor’s Bluebird label.

1953: Walt Disney’s animated feature “Peter Pan” is first released.

1967: “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” premieres on CBS-TV.

1971: Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell step onto the surface of the moon in the first of two lunar excursions.

1973: Services are held at Arlington National Cemetery for U.S. Army Col. William B. Nolde, the last official American combat casualty before the Vietnam War cease-fire took effect.

1985: Ugo Vetere, the mayor of modern Rome, and Chedli Klibi, the mayor of modern Carthage, sign a treaty ending the Punic Wars after more than 20 centuries.

1989: The Soviet Union announces that all but a small rear-guard contingent of its troops have left Afghanistan.

1994: White separatist Byron De La Beckwith is convicted in Jackson, Miss., of murdering civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963, and is immediately sentenced to life in prison. (Beckwith died Jan. 21, 2001 at age 80.)

Sixty-eight people are killed when a mortar shell explodes in a marketplace in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

2005: Steve Young and Dan Marino are elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

2010: Toyota’s president, Akio Toyoda, emerges from seclusion to apologize and address criticism that the automaker had mishandled a crisis over sticking gas pedals.

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Weekend negotiations head off a strike by 550 nonteaching employees in the Youngstown City School District, members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Jerome R. Tellington Jr. of 176 St. Louis Ave. dies of a shotgun wound of the abdomen suffered at Willie Mae’s Soul Kitchen on Hillman Street after an argument with two men.

The Ukrainian Republic’s rich resources and large population have made it a guiding force in nationalistic movements striving for independence from the Soviet Union, says George Kulchytsky, a professor at Youngstown State University. Many local Ukrainians, estimated at 15,000, have relatives in the republic, which was forced into the Soviet Union in 1922.

1975: More than half the homes surveyed in New Middletown by the Mahoning County Board of Health have their downspouts or sump pumps illegally hooked into the sanitary sewer system.

Four hundred laid-off autoworkers from the Lordstown General Motors plant are among 10,000 UAW members descending on Washington, D.C., asking what the Ford administration intends to do to help recovery of the auto industry.

Burglars steal all the furniture from the home of the Rev. Payton Johnson, 3120 Winton Ave., while the pastor of First Baptist Church was dying of cancer in St. John Medical Center, Steubenville.

1965: Tom M. Girdler, board chairman of Republic Steel Corp., dies of a heart attack at the age of 87 at his country home near Easton, Md. He was Republic’s first chairman when it was organized in 1930.

Atty. Joseph Donofrio resigns as police prosecutor because he intends to seek election as a judge on Youngstown Municipal Court.

Christian Homes of Youngstown Inc., a committee of members from Central Christian and First Christian churches, is studying the possibility of buying the Hotel Pick-Ohio for use as a home for retirees.

1940: Joseph W. Wess, picturesque Mahoning Valley figure and politician for more than a generation, dies in St.. Elizabeth Hospital. He was 82.

Charles Bower, 25, of Southington dies of injuries suffered when a tractor skidded and crushed him as he and several companions were attempting to move a cabin in Ashtabula County.

Youngstown Municipal Railway Co. orders 10, 35-passenger gasoline-powered buses from Twin Coach Co. of Kent at a cost of $100,000.